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Concept
David Mushet
Summary
David Mushet (2 October 1772 – 7 June 1847) was a Scottish engineer, known for his inventions in the field of metallurgy. Mushet was an early advocate of animal rights.
Mushet was born on 2 October 1772 in Dalkeith near Edinburgh, the youngest son of Margaret Cochran and William Mushet. He was educated at Dalkeith Grammar School.
When Mushet was a boy, his father (a weaver by trade) established a foundry at Croft Street in Dalkeith. He would sometimes accompany him at the ironworks and it was on these visits that the first seeds of his lifelong obsession with iron-making were sown.
Mushet left school at the age of 19, but did not go to work at his father's foundry. Instead, being good at mathematics, he began work as an accountant at the Clyde Iron Works near Glasgow. Alongside his bookkeeping duties, he read extensively on the subject of iron making and, after a staff reduction was made in 1793, he began a series of experimental researches.
At first, these were encouraged by his employers, and he even taught assaying to the manager's son; but later, and without reason given, he was prohibited from experimenting during work hours. Forced to continue his experiments outside office hours, he frequently worked until the early hours of the morning and in just a few years he became an established authority on the manufacture of iron.
In 1800, he patented a process to make cast steel from wrought iron, which he then sold to a Sheffield firm for £3,000. His employers, becoming jealous of him, dismissed him from the Clyde Iron Works in the same year.
The following year, with the help of partners, he bought and rebuilt the Calder Iron Works, where he continued his experiments. It was here he made his second great discovery; in 1801, he demonstrated that 'Black-band Ironstone,' (typically found with a thin seam of inferior 'wild Coal') could be used to economically produce iron.
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